Parchment or Prison

I watched a Ted Talk by Alice Goffman this morning. She emphasized the compound hurdles that confront youngsters who are poor, black, Hispanic, living in dysfunctional homes, exposed to additional scrutiny by authorities, ad infinitum. She’s right. I invite you to watch her talk.

I’ve written about the taker-maker analogy in terms of individual responsibility (see the novel Tunnel Vision). Maybe, there’s an appropriate analogy when it comes to justice. What if one end of the teeter-totter is labeled hobble and the other end is labeled gobble.

Let’s speculate there are a small number of individuals who cannot be integrated into main stream society. Further, there are many individuals who will thrive in the dominant millieu. But what about the big blob of folks in the middle? I hypothesize that the blob will migrate to the hobble or gobble end of the hobble-gobble depending on the slope of the hobble-gobble.

Can we tip our justice system a little toward the gobble end and create infinite routes to parchment and far fewer routes to prison?